Found a Pigeon in my Kitchen! And its Poop :(

Just got my departure information in an e-mail! Oh wow. I'm kinda sad!

I'm leaving at on Saturday at 12:00 for Heathrow with 4 other kids. I dont think any of them are on my plane, but at least I won't be traveling to the airport alone. I haven't written for the past 5 ish days only because I've been doing so much stuff!!! I don't want to forget anything I've done so I'll try to summarize from the last time I wrote.

Good news! They picked my essay to go into the newsletter! So I'll try to get my hands on a few of them before I get home.

I'll start with:
Weds, July 22nd- I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum with Jenna and Amber. This museum was unbelievably amazing. I wanted to stay in it all day long, and I couldn't believe we had to leave in about 2 hours. The girls had to get back to class, but it was such an amazing museum. It was a HUGE compilation of things spanning centuries. Like portraits, fabrics, statues, tools, JEWELERY! the Jewelery section was by far the most impressive and interesting part. It was halls and halls of elaborate jewelery from every century from Lords and Ladies to the common person's Jewelery. Mom would have loved it. Anyway, Amber and Jenna left for class and I decided to stay in Knightsbridge and do a little bit more shopping. I got some souvineers for Julie and Dana, and bought myself a small suitcase from London Luggage Co.

Thurs, July 23rd- I went into Stratford again, but this time with my Shakespeare class. This time was a lot more intimate than last time, and my teacher Gregg bought along his lovely wife Julia, who was the sweetest woman. By the end of the day we were calling them mom and dad. It was really funny. They knew so much history about it, the two of them wouldn't stop talking all day. But I learned a LOT. It was a great trip and I really bonded with my girls from the class. They're all really great. We went into this church that was really extremely old, like from the 13th century, and there were remnants of a painting that had been scraped off and plastered over during the Protestant Refromation, which was very rare, because they didn't like to have paintings on the walls of churches once King Henry VIII became king, becuas they thought it distracted from the worship. Gregg told us that remnants of paintings like this were extremely rare. And this old church in stratford had it on the wall. It was actually really cool to see what would have been there before they took it down. Here is a small pic of what it looked like.

Someone actually scraped off the plaster that was put over it to try and restore what used to be there. Really cool, huh? After that we saw an amazing production of The Winter's Tale at the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is the official Shakespeare playhouse in Stratford. It was amazing. The girls and I stayed in for a little bit and had a few drinks before the long train ride back to London, Waterloo.
Fri, July 24th- Had to leave 9am for Paris. It was a long journey. We took the Eurostar which was a hella trip for my eardrums. I felt all stuffed up and clogged. Not fun. But I got another stamp on my passport! After we got into Paris, we took a bus tour of the main attractions which took about 2 and a half hours. (They didn't even give us a breather! we still had our luggage with us!) It was great, and beautiful, but after such a long day of traveling, we all wanted to get back to the hotel and venture out by ourselves!

Once we settled into the hotel then ventured out for something to eat, and I desperatley wanted wine! We went to this cute cafe that we found a few blocks down from the Bastille (where we were staying) and had dinner. After that, we went to the Eiffel tower and relaxed for a long time out in the field! We watched the lights twinkle and had so much fun! Then bedime.
Sat, July 25th- Another walking tour of Paris, covered in video that I'm gonna put together! We saw Notre Dame and walked through it. It was beautiful, and larger than life.

Sun, July 26th- We went to the Louvre in the morning, which I also have a lot of videos of so I won't talk that much about it. It was beautiful, but we didn't get much time in there as we should have. Then, another walking tour! But this time, of Monmarte, a little village alllllll the way on the tippy top of paris. It was so cute up there, and they film movies there all of the time. Got a yummmy Banana and Nutella crepe and saw the Moulin Rouge!
Then I came back, (I skipped Monday becuase it was just traveling all day) and I've been working on this stinky paper all day long! I want it to be over, but It just won't quit! Tomorrow I'm meeting with my class at the pub, I don't think we'll be doing much Shakespeare talk. We've really bonded, and our teacher is really fun. Its the last day of classes for me tomorrow so i'm really excited that I knocked 3 credits out of the way and had so much fun doing it! I'll write more later becuase my hands are tired!! Ah! I miss you all!